(3)Vivi vs (11)Aya Brea 2018
Ulti's Analysis In every NCAA tournament a low seed wins a game or two and people completely lose their shit. Remember when Florida Gulf Coast shocked the world, dunked all over Georgetown and San Diego State, and Andy Enfield was able to lie to USC and convince them he can actually coach? There was a massive reality check waiting for them after a week of interviews and getting smoke blown up their asses; it was called "Florida", and they got utterly destroyed when an actual good team decided to show up. It's very rare to get a George Mason or a Loyola Chicago, and even those teams eventually got blown out of the gym. Almost always, the underdogs eventually eliminate each other or run into a good team late and get destroyed. The NCAAs have had a few close calls where underdogs almost win the tournament, so let's not act like our version of a mid major can't win anything, but they aren't called miracle runs for a reason. The mid major teams that actually threaten every year (Gonzaga these days, but back in the 80s it was a bunch of teams getting ready to join power conferences) usually end up recruiting like a power conference or just outright joining one. Louisville was a mid major in 1986 when a mid major last won the tournament, but does anyone actually consider them a mid major college? Not really. To translate this into GameFAQs terms instead of making this about college basketball, our mid majors need to catch rallies to win. That's their version of a Cinderella run, with Undertale or L-Block being the ultimate example of one paying off. Usually, you get what happened to Aya Brea here. Yeah your win was cute, but one win means very little. Vivi is playing big boy basketball and just annihilated Aya for this entire match. He did so while Ganondorf was busy choking himself, which got people in a frenzy that everyone's favorite Final Fantasy underdog could win this division even in the face of Breath of the Wild. There was also one other hilarious result going on during all of this, which we'll get into in a second. (For the wiki readers, that's alluding to Leon Kennedy vs Donkey Kong.) Side note. Someone asked how I can still write so much. My favorite sporting event is the NCAA men's basketball tournament (even above the Superb Owl) and my favorite hobby is video games, plus I love math. These contests combine all those worlds, and I could stare at these numbers all day while trying to explain them in an entertaining way. I also bottle up a bunch of writing energy and let it loose come PCA time. It's lame as fuck I'm sure, but I don't care. Safer777's Analysis Look at this! I believe Aya maybe the weakest character to reach Round 2. So here we have a rare result of a character doing better in Round 2 that he did in Round 1! Damn! Of course Vivi won with more than a tripling. But we have another strange thing. We can't really judge Vivi's power because he has faced 2 really weak opponents. So yeah he is Round 3 but haven't really seen what he is capable for. Well we shall see in the next match! Vivi is strong of course but how strong? Tsunami's Analysis This was a predictable blowout. Regardless of who won, it would set up a rematch of at least one previous Square vs. Nintendo match, and based on those past results, it was easy to joke in "Why Did They Lose?" that Square had fixed the match. Aya making this contest was honestly kind of surprising; she was a 26-seed in 2013 and hasn't had any releases since then to make her relevant. Of course, she's hardly the only bottom-third seed from that contest to make it to this one. The full list: 19-seeds: Jill Valentine 20-seeds: Aerith Gainsborough Ridley 21-seeds: Ryu Hayabusa Simon Belmont Chun-Li Cecil Harvey 23-seeds: Vincent Valentine 24-seeds: Peach Pac-Man Claire Redfield 26-seeds: Aya Brea Bomberman 8 for 13 at making Round 2, with one of them making it all the way to Round 4. Though we were guaranteed at least one 21-seed from last contest would make Round 2 due to two of them facing each other in Round 1. My only explanation for this was that people saw the expanded field and figured that it would be easy to rally whatever ridiculous obscure character they loved into the field, so contest regulars got even fewer nominations than usual. One of the other seeding gimmicks that year was that the 3-seeds would all be highly touted newcomers who would no doubt fail miserably. Only 4 of those 9 even made this contest and they all lost in Round 1. Category:2018 Contest Matches